This invention relates to a vehicle lamp of a type having a housing, a light-transmissive shield covering the housing that extends across a corner area of a vehicle, at least one lamp chamber in the housing in which light source is positioned, and a Fresnel lens having concentrically arranged prism rings located between the light source and the light-transmissive shield, that is placed adjacent to the light-transmissive shield in at least one partial area.
German patent document (DE 41 17 463 C2) discloses a vehicle lamp having a housing and a light-transmissive shield that covers the housing. The vehicle lamp has at least one lamp chamber positioned at a corner area of the vehicle so that light distribution is achieved along both a longitudinal axis of the vehicle and at a side of the vehicle. To create the light distribution, a light source and a Fresnel lens that collects the light from the light source are placed in the lamp chamber, the Fresnel lens being positioned adjacent the light-transmissive shield in at least one partial area of the light-transmissive shield and extending essentially across the entire lamp chamber. This Fresnel lens has at least one curved partial area.
In vehicle lamps of this design, a problem arises in illuminating the entire light-transmissive shield as evenly as possible while still providing a light distribution prescribed by law. The Fresnel lenses used for this purpose either have an extremely simple geometry that does not provide the desired light distribution, or have very expensive and complicated geometries that are difficult to design, the construction and manufacture of which is highly cost-intensive.
An object of this invention is to provide a vehicle lamp that employs a Fresnel lens as a light collecting device for achieving an optimized, extending-to-a-side-area-of-a-vehicle, light distribution and illumination, which at the same time can be constructed and manufactured simply and inexpensively.